page_title: Judit Polgár
section_title: Grandmaster
hierarchical_section_title: Judit Polgár / Career / Grandmaster
caption_attribution_description: Lewis chessmen English: Two kings and two queens from the Uig, or Lewis chessmen at the British Museum. Deutsch: Könige und Damen der mittelalterlichen Lewis-Schachfiguren im British Museum.
context_page_description: Judit Polgár is a Hungarian chess player. She is generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. Since September 2015, she has been inactive. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former World Champion Bobby Fischer. She was the youngest ever player to break into the FIDE top 100 players rating list, ranking No. 55 in the January 1989 rating list, at the age of 12. She is the only woman to qualify for a World Championship tournament, having done so in 2005. She is the first, and to date only, woman to have surpassed 2700 Elo, reaching a career peak rating of 2735 and peak world ranking of No. 8, both achieved in 2005. She was the No. 1 rated woman in the world from January 1989 until her retirement on 13 August 2014.
  She has won or shared first in the chess tournaments of Hastings 1993, Madrid 1994, León 1996, U.S. Open 1998, Hoogeveen 1999, Sigeman & Co 2000, Japfa 2000, and the Najdorf Memorial 2000.
context_section_description: In December 1991, Polgár achieved the grandmaster title by winning the Hungarian National Championship, at the time the youngest ever at 15 years, 5 months to have achieved the title. This beat Fischer's record by a month. Hungary, one of the strongest chess-playing countries, had all but one of their strongest players participate in that year's championship, as only Zoltán Ribli was missing. Going into the last round, Polgár needed only a draw to achieve the GM title, but she won her game against GM Tibor Tolnai to finish first, with six points in nine games. Judit's sister Susan had earned the GM title in January 1991.
  In 1992, Polgár tied for second, behind Anatoly Karpov at the Madrid International in Linares. She and Russian GM Vladimir Epishin finished with 5½–3½. In July 1992, she placed second in the Reshevsky Memorial in Manhattan finishing with four wins, five draws and no losses. In September 1992, Polgár participated in a tournament held in Aruba in which a team of senior men's players competed against a team of top women players. The men's team consisted of Lev Polugaevsky, Wolfgang Uhlmann, Oscar Panno, Efim Geller, Borislav Ivkov and Vasily Smyslov. The women's team consisted of Judit and Zsuzsa Polgár, Pia Cramling, Chiburdanidze, Ketevan Arakhamia and Alisa Galliamova. The men won the tournament 39–33. The overall high scorer was Polugaevsky, 57 years old with Polgár, 16, finishing second with 7½–4½.
  Polgár then tied for first in the Hastings tournament held over New Year's, 1992–93. Russian GM Evgeny Bareev, at the time ranked eighth in the world, led going into tournament's last round, but was defeated by Polgár in their second individual game, allowing her to share first. Immediately following the Hastings tournament, Polgár played an exhibition match in February against former World Champion, Boris Spassky. She won the match 5½–4½ and won the largest prize money to that point in her career of $110,000. Polgár also participated in the Melody Amber tournament in Monaco which featured a blindfold tournament of 12 grandmasters. Anand and Karpov finished first, Ljubojević third, while Polgár finished in clear fourth with 6½ points from 11 rounds, ahead of other strong GMs such as Ivanchuk, Short, Korchnoi and her sister Susan.
  In 1993, Polgár became the first woman to ever qualify for an Interzonal tournament. In March, she finished in a four-way tie for second place in the Budapest Zonal and won the tiebreaking tournament. She then confirmed her status as one of the world's leading players, narrowly failing to qualify for the Candidates Tournaments at the rival FIDE and PCA Interzonal tournaments.
  In the summer of 1993, Bobby Fischer stayed for a time in the Polgár household. He had been living in seclusion in Yugoslavia due to an arrest warrant issued by the United States for violating the U.N. blockade of Yugoslavia with his 1992 match against Spassky. Susan Polgár met Bobby with her family and persuaded him to come out of hiding "in a cramped hotel room in a small Yugoslavian village". During his stay, he played many games of Fischer Random Chess and helped the sisters analyse their games. Susan said, while he was friendly on a personal level and recalled mostly pleasant moments as their guest, there were conflicts due to his political views. On the suggestion of a friend of Fischer, a match of blitz chess between Fischer and Polgár was arranged and announced to the press. However, problems ensued between Fischer and László Polgár and Fischer cancelled the match, saying to a friend on whether the match would take place, "No, they're Jewish."
  In the summer of 1994, Polgár had the greatest success of her career to that point, when she won the Madrid International in Spain. Against a field which included Gata Kamsky, Evgeny Bareev, Valery Salov and Ivan Sokolov, she finished 7–2 and 1½ points ahead of second place. Her performance rating for the tournament was 2778 against an opposition rated at 2672.
  In October 1994, she played in a tournament in Buenos Aires which was a tribute to an ailing Polugaevsky
caption: Lewis chessmen
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "800", "Image ImageLength": "506", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:07:05 10:20:40", "Image ExifOffset": "240", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "390", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8094", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "506"}